2017 Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture

FIU Linguistics Program and the Department of English

You are cordially invited to the 2017 Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture

Thursday, Feb. 23, 7 p.m.

CBC 232-235, Modesto A. Maidique Campus (MMC), FIU

Shobhana Chelliah
Professor, Linguistics Program, University of North Texas
WHAT ENDANGERED LANGUAGES
TEACH US ABOUT HUMAN COGNITION

Followed by
20th Anniversary of Truby Award for Outstanding Linguistics Student

This event is free and open to FIU students and open to the public

Sponsored in part by The Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture Series, FIUs Linguistics
Program, FIUs Department of English, and FIUs Graduate Linguistics Association and CSO

School of Environment, Arts and Society

 2017 Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture
Feb. 23, 2017 | 7 p.m.
CBC 232-235, Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Florida International University

WELCOME
Bill Anderson, Vice Dean, College of Arts, Sciences & Education
Heather Russell, Chair, Department of English

Lecture to be followed by 20th Anniversary of Truby Award for Outstanding Graduate

Student in Linguistics

FEATURED SPEAKER

Shobhana Chelliah, Professor, Linguistics Program, University of North Texas

WHAT ENDANGERED LANGUAGES TEACH US ABOUT HUMAN COGNITION

Language Documentation is a reborn, refashioned, and re-energized subfield of linguistics

motivated by the urgent task of creating a record of the worlds fast disappearing languages.
In addition to producing resources for communities interested in language and culture
preservation, maintenance, and revitalization, endangered language data provide a view of how
humans represent and interact with their environment. Language documentation continues to
challenge current theories of language structure and change. Illustrative examples come from
the Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India. In these languages we find complex systems
of directional marking which, in the simplest sense, indicate the direction in which an activity
is or will be performed. These directionals are metaphorically extended to express movement
through time and social or psychological space. Appropriate usage requires knowledge of
social conventions and the cultural attribution of relative prestige of locations and requires us
to revisit theories of spatial cognition. An additional illustrative point is a pattern of participant
marking, i.e. ways that speakers indicate who does what to whom in a sentence. From current
typological studies we expect one of three participant marking patterns and these are based
on purely syntactic factors. From very small languages in and around the Himalayan region we
discover that there is a possible fourth pattern based not on syntax but on information structure
and pragmatics a game changing discovery for syntactic and typological theory.

Shobhana Chelliah is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics

and Technical Communication, University of North Texas. She is the
author or editor of numerous books, monographs, chapters, and articles
on endangered language, including work on Manipuri, Meithei, and
Lamkang. She has served as the Rotating Program Director, NSFs
Documenting Endangered Languages Program. Her most recent work is
Endangered Languages, to be published by Routledge.
 2017 Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture
Feb. 24, 2017 | 10 a.m.
CBC 232-235, Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Florida International University

SECOND TALK: LINGUISTICS SPECIALIST TALK

Shobhana Chelliah, Professor, Linguistics Program, University of North Texas

COGNITIVE ACCESSIBILITY AND ANIMACY: PREDICTORS OF REFERENCE FORM IN THE
TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE MEITEI

In past work on reference form (Givn 1983, Ariel 1990, Prince 1992, Chafe 1994, Arnold 1998
and 2003, Kibrik 2011) the cognitive accessibility of an entity - that is, whether an entity is active
in the working memory of the hearer - has been considered a major factor in determining whether
a full noun phrase (a noun phrase with lexical content) or a reduced noun phrase (a noun phrase
represented by something semantically leaner like a pronoun or zero anaphor) will occur in
natural discourse. I tested this assumption by examining the relationship between referent shape
and cognitive accessibility in a collection of narratives from the Tibeto-Burman Meitei. I coded
interlinear glossed texts in Meitei for thematic role and information status of each noun phrase.
Coding for information status tells us how recently a noun phrase is mentioned in a discourse.
Since recently mentioned noun phrases are active in working memory and highly accessible,
they should occur more often as zero anaphors or pronouns rather than as full noun phrases.
Similarly, Agents or noun phrases that link back to previously mentioned Agents have been shown
to be prominent in the consciousness of the hearer and speaker. Therefore, Agent noun phrases
may occur more often as reduced rather than full noun phrases.

Results from the Meitei data are surprising. As expected, noun phrases are more likely to be
lexically instantiated when first mentioned but are most likely to be pronouns or zero anaphors
when reintroduced. Agents, however, are not special in this distribution; in fact, all animate noun
phrases are distributed in this manner. On the other hand, regardless of their information status,
inanimate noun phrases remain fairly constant in being instantiated as full NPs. The types of
determiners and focusing morphology that appear with inanimate objects are also fairly limited.
These data point to the fact that while cognitive accessibility is relevant, narrative intent is an
equally strong factor in determining NP shape. Both noun phrase shape and the range of noun
phrase morphology conspire to provide a static view of inanimate entities, while the variety of
shapes and morphology forms allows for a dynamic view of animate entities.

References
Ariel, M. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.
Arnold, J. E. 1998. Reference Form and Discourse Patterns. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.
Stanford U.
Arnold, J. E. 2003. Multiple constraints on reference form: Null, pronominal, and full reference
in Mapudungun. In J. J. Du Bois, J. W., L. E. Kumpf & W. J. Ashby (eds.), Preferred
argument structure: Grammar as architecture for function, 225245. John Benjamins:
Amsterdam.
Chafe, W. 1994. Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious
experience in speaking and writing. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Givn, T. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In T. Givn (ed.) Topic continuity
in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study, 1-42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing.
Kibrik, A. A. 2011. Reference in discourse. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Prince, E. 1992. The ZPG Letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status. In S. Thompson
& W. Mann (eds.), Discourse description: Diverse analyses of a fund raising text, 295-325
Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Henry Truby Prize for Graduate Studies
FIU Linguistics Program and the Department of English

Established in memory of the late Henry M. Truby by his family and friends, this award
honors the top graduate student in the FIU Linguistics Program each year.

About Henry M. Truby

1919-1993
Dr. Henry (Hank) Mayer Truby was a modern Renaissance Man
with extremely wide interests and accomplishments. He had more
than 250 publications on general linguistics, phonetics, acoustics,
voice printing, newborn infant cry sounds, speech synthesis
and voice recognition, and dolphin sonic output. He was also an
athlete (tennis pro and coach and international ping pong whiz),
a decorated soldier in the U.S. Army (Bronze Star and two Purple
Hearts from WWII), an accomplished composer and musician
(more than 100 songs and countless poems written), an advocate for the environment, and a
dedicated family man and father of six exceptional children (who acquired his knack for language
and are fluent in Swedish).
Hank was born in Kansas and raised in Texas, and as a youth attended a military school in
Wisconsin by winning a spelling bee. He received his B.A. at the U. of Texas at Austin, his M.A.
in English at the U. of Wisconsin, and his Ph.D. in Linguistics at Columbia U. He went to Sweden
in 1955 and served as a researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, studying acoustic
phonetics and speech synthesis. In Sweden he met his wife, Ann-Sofi (Sundin), and he earned
a Ph.D. in Phonetics at the U. of Lund, in 1959. He returned to the States with assignments at
the NIH Bethesda Clinical Center in Washington, and as a Staff Scientist with IBM in Speech
Communication Research. He came to Miami in 1965, working initially at the Communications
Research Institute in Coconut Grove studying dolphin and interspecies communication. He was
a professor at the U. of Miami from 1965 to 1975 in Pediatrics, Linguistics, and Anthropology.
He was active in the World Dolphin Foundation, where he served as President and Director of
Scientific Research. He was a Charter Member of the Board of Directors of the International
Association of Voiceprint Identification, 1971-78.
In retirement Hank worked as a consultant in forensic linguistics, specifically performing
analyses of voice prints or spectrograms of speech samples of individuals involved in
cases that depended on proper identification of the author of voice recordings, and then
providing expert testimony in court. Hank was involved in a number of high-profile international
controversies. In one case, around 1987, a controversy rocked the music world with supposed
sightings of a presumably long-dead Elvis Presley. A book was released with a cassette tape
attached that purported to have a contemporary recording of Elvis talking. A local television
channel called on Hank to analyze that tape to see if the voice was really that of Elvis. He
determined the recording was fake, and even identified it as that of an associate of the author of
the book.
Dr. Truby conducted many analyses in our own Linguistics Lab, and we have the honor of
continued association with this remarkable man through his familys generous funding of the
Henry M. Truby Prize, to honor an outstanding student of Linguistics.

Dr. John Jensen (retired, FIU professor from 1978-2010)

Primary source: World Dolphin Foundation website, including a biography composed
by Mr. Fred Truby, the eldest of Henrys three sons
(http://www.planetpuna.com/World%20Dolphin%20Foundation/Truby.htm).
Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture Series
FIU Linguistics Program and the Department of English

About the Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture Series

The Barbara Gordon Memorial Lecture Series in Linguistics was
established at FIU in 1984 by Senator Jack Gordon, former State
Senator of Florida, in memory of his first wife, Barbara Gordon. Dr.
Barbara Gordon received her BA in English and Psychology from the
University of Wisconsin in 1948, her MA in Teaching English and Foreign
Languages from Columbia University in 1949 and her Ed.D. in Educational
Linguistics from Columbia University in 1962. Her areas of specialization
were Psycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Educational Linguistics,
Conversational Interaction, and Ethnosemantics.
Each year, the FIU Linguistics Program and the Barbara Gordon Memorial Endowment
bring a major figure in the discipline to campus for a public lecture and a special
workshop for linguistics faculty and graduate students.
Recent speakers have included:
Luna Filipovi (U of East Anglia, UK)
Language in the Witness Stand: Forensic Linguistic Solutions for
Cross-Linguistic Problems in Witness Interviews
Fred Genesee (McGill U)
Dual Language Learning: Expanding the Mind
Norma Mendoza-Denton (U of Arizona)
Citizen Rage: Town Hall Meetings and Constitutional Disagreement
in American Politics
Lise Menn (U of Colorado)
Doing Cross-Linguistic Studies on Aphasia
Lesley Milroy (U of Michigan)
Bilingual Conversations: Code-Switching as Social Action
Salikoko S. Mufwene (U of Chicago)
Globalization, Colonization and Language Vitality
Geoffrey Nunberg (UC Berkeley)
The Paradox of Political Language
Shana Poplack (U of Ottawa)
Contact, Code-switching and (Resistance to) Convergence: The Case of
Preposition Stranding in Quebec French
Kemp Williams (IBM, Inc.)
Finding Nemo/Nemeau/Nimoe: The Case for Analytical Name Scoring
Silvina Montrul (U Illinois Champagne Urbana)
Native Speakers, Interrupted

Cover photo courtesy of http://lamkanglangaugeresource.weebly.com/

If you need more information, please contact: Linguistics@fiu.edu, 305-348-3155.

 FIU Linguistics Program
Modesto A. Maidique Campus | 305-348-2874
11200 S.W. 8th St., DM 453, Miami, FL 33199